


Little Liar

by Crowlows19



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-09
Updated: 2020-02-09
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:59:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22637164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crowlows19/pseuds/Crowlows19
Summary: Bruce reflects on the times he caught Tim in a lie.
Relationships: Tim Drake & Bruce Wayne
Comments: 17
Kudos: 600





	Little Liar

Tim lied a lot. Almost constantly. But he hardly ever lied to Bruce. In fact, Bruce could think of exactly three times Tim had outright lied to his face. 

One of those times had been three seconds into his first sparring training when Tim had tried to tell him that being thrown to the ground by a full-grown man hadn’t hurt in the slightest. Bruce had lectured him for so long that Tim never outright lied about an injury again. Ignored, yes. Forgotten about, yes, all the time. But not lied about. 

Another time had been the whole Uncle Eddie debacle which still made him equally angry and proud every time someone brought it up. It had just been so well done. 

The time that Bruce would always consider to be the most important had been when Tim had started lying to him not five minutes after Bruce had agreed to train him. 

Bruce had decided to walk Tim home after he’d had some sort of break with reality and agreed to train him. He had left a confounded Dick and relieved Alfred behind at the Manor, planning to use this walk with Tim to see what else he could get out of the boy. 

“Are you sure about keeping this from your parents?” Bruce asked. He had been half-hoping that Tim’s parents would think he’d gone crazy and abscond with their son somewhere, absolving Bruce of his horrible weakness. 

“Positive!” Tim said, hopping up on a low stone wall to walk beside Bruce, matching their heights. Tim was small for his age and Bruce could tell with one look that the boy was underweight. That would have to change if he ever hoped to have a punch worth anything. Or to even have the ability to pull himself up the side of a building. Or to simply have any endurance. 

Bruce could already see the amount of work Tim would have to put in to be able to do this job. At least physically. His mental prowess was clearly already there. This would be a far different challenge than the other two had been. Dick had been an athlete since birth and Jason had been tough, carved by time on the streets of Crime Alley. He wondered if Tim could even do a push-up.

“This will be the most difficult thing you’ve ever done in your entire life,” Bruce warned him. “You won’t be able to tell anyone about it, no matter how much you want you. This kind of secret can destroy relationships.”

“I’ll be okay,” Tim said, still as happy as could be. “I don’t have any friends.”

“I’m not talking about friends,” Bruce replied, earmarking that comment for later dissection. “I’m talking about your parents. You’ll have to lie to them. Constantly. You have to be okay with that. There’s no coming to me a year from now asking if you can tell them the truth. The answer will always be no. Do you understand?”

“Yeah,” Tim replied, without missing a beat. “I understand.”

Tim jumped down from the wall and looked up at Bruce. He was so short, much shorter than Jason and Dick had been at that age. They stopped walking and just looked at each other for a second. 

“When will your parents be home?” Bruce finally asked. 

“They’ll be home by dinner,” Tim said. 

Bruce would only find out later that that had been a bald-faced lie. And his first reaction was to marvel over the fact that Tim didn’t have any tells. At least, none that Bruce had been able to pick up on. It wouldn’t be until Tim was seventeen and trying to avoid questions about his missing spleen that Bruce would see it. Tim’s blinking would become slightly slower, more deliberate as if he was forcing his body to remain calm and neutral. It was nearly impossible to see, but it was there. 

00000

Tim reported to the cave early that next afternoon as planned. Just as he’d done twice before Bruce began inquiring about the boy’s physical ability, gauging where to begin this training. 

“Can you do push-ups?” Bruce asked. 

“Nope,” Tim replied, not sounding ashamed in the slightest. 

“How far can you run?”

“To the fridge,” Tim said. 

“Have you ever been in a fight?”

“I punched Hank in the face when we were six,” Tim said. “He kept breaking my crayons.”

Well, at least he was honest about that much.

00000

Bruce had started Tim from scratch. He taught him the proper way to do a push-up and then put him on the treadmill, teaching him how to run. Tim could run about thirty seconds before he was floundering and running out of air. It reminded Bruce of when he’d first started training. He had been just as out of shape and just as stubborn. He could tell by Tim’s utter lack of complaining over how sore he was that the boy would stick through the pain and see it to the end. 

The problem wasn’t Tim’s lack of athletic ability; it was his blatant disregard of the whole truth.

Somewhere around the third day, Bruce started asking questions. 

“Where are your parents?”

“Traveling.”

“Traveling where?”

“Europe.”

“Where in Europe?”

“Germany.”

“When will they be back?”

“Soon.”

“Who’s in charge of you?”

“Mrs. Mack.”

“Who is that?”

“Housekeeper.”

Pulling answers out of the boy was like pulling teeth. 

00000

It had taken Bruce five minutes to figure out where Tim’s parents actually were. The boy’s intel was out of date; they had left Germany weeks ago. Following the itinerary he had found on the Drake Industries servers, Bruce calculated that it would be about six months before they returned to Gotham. Not something that was unusual for parents of Gotham’s elite children. 

And technically Tim was still in boarding school being looked after by the staff of Gotham Academy and, when he came home for a few days here and there, Mrs. Mack. 

Bruce had experienced a very similar upbringing, except for sleeping in the dorms, of course. Alfred had refused to let him live anywhere but under his watchful eye. 

00000

It had taken Bruce about two weeks of knowing Tim to find out that the boy wasn’t living in the Gotham Academy dorms as he’d said but in the house next door. It had taken him another week to ascertain Mrs. Mack’s full schedule. 

According to the disapproving emails Headmaster Hammer had sent to Janet Drake, Tim was no longer allowed in the dorms given the discovery of the following contraband stuffed underneath his bed: one six-pack of energy drinks whose formula was not legal in the United States, two unapproved laptops, a skateboard, sixteen stink bombs, nineteen bags of Twizzlers, four cell phones, a personal wifi router, fireworks, and a fake ID putting his age at sixteen (the age airlines required you to be to travel without a parent or guardian’s authorization).

Janet had profusely apologized and had set up a conference call with the Headmaster. Based on her follow up email, Tim had been allowed to remain a student but he would have to live elsewhere. The staff considered him too unruly. Janet had replied that Tim would be looked after by the staff at the house for the next few days until she could make it back to Gotham.

Bruce had no idea if Janet had ever intended on actually returning but she had instead gone with Jack to Spain, following their Drake Industries itinerary to the letter. If she had come back to Gotham, she might have been able to prevent Tim from boarding a plane to San Francisco, taking a taxi directly to Dick’s apartment, and knocking on his door. 

At least, according to Tim’s credit card statement. The boy hadn’t purchased his ticket until after Janet had sent him a text saying she’d changed her mind, she was sticking to the original travel plans. 

In a separate email, Jack had asked Mrs. Mack to maintain her normal schedule but to report back to him directly if she noticed any bad behavior from Tim. Bruce didn’t know how she was supposed to notice anything when she only worked four days a week, didn’t arrive until after he’d left for school, and left the house before he came home. 

It was then that Bruce realized Tim was living on his own, in a mansion, miles from the nearest adult. 

00000

“How often do you see Mrs. Mack?”

“All the time.”

“Does she live at the house?”

“Only when I’m there.”

Tim clearly wasn’t going to tell him the truth. 

00000

After several weeks of this nonsense, Bruce wandered around the Drake mansion while Tim was in school on a Thursday. Most of the house was shut down with sheets over the furniture and doors shut. To him, it looked abandoned. There were two rooms that held any significant evidence of life: the kitchen and Tim’s room. The kitchen held the debris of a kid who had clearly never been asked to wash a dish in his life. Tim’s room looked like a bomb had been off. 

The only thing truly worrisome about the room was that Tim had installed deadlocks on his bedroom door. He clearly didn’t feel comfortable being in the house by himself. Bruce didn’t blame him; to a child, every creak and groan was an ax murderer. 

He poked around in there for hours, waiting for the boy to come home. Bruce was idly lounging on Tim’s unmade bad, reading his Wayne Enterprises emails when the boy finally walked in and froze when he saw him there. 

“You shouldn’t be here,” Tim said. He had filled out a little bit from the strength training Bruce had him doing but he was still scrawny and still short. And his voice cracked a lot, especially when he started to get excited. Bruce raised an eyebrow at him. 

“And why is that?” he asked. “Who could catch me? Your parents aren’t even in the country and Mrs. Mack doesn’t come on Thursdays.”

Tim’s mouth opened and closed, at a loss for words. He clearly hadn’t expected Bruce to know any of that or, at the very least, to not say it so plainly. 

“Still,” he replied, drawing himself up to his full height. “Get out of my room.”

Bruce had to make a sincere effort not to laugh in Tim’s face. 

“No,” he said, sitting up and turning so he could plant his feet on the floor. He didn’t stand though. He wanted them to be eye level, even if Tim refused to come any closer. The room was so large there were at least fifteen feet between them. 

“What are you doing here?” Tim asked, eyes narrowing. “I’m not supposed to be at the cave until eight.”

“I’m here to talk to you,” Bruce told him. Tim eyed him carefully. Bruce wondered if the boy would try to run. It wasn’t his style; Tim liked to negotiate his way out of trouble, often successfully. 

“About?”

“Where are your parents?” Bruce asked and when Tim immediately opened his mouth, Bruce held up a hand. Tim shut his mouth, his teeth clicking together. “And before you bother with another lie, I want you to think very carefully about how far something like that will get you.”

They sat in utter silence for nearly a full minute and Bruce watched, fascinated, as Tim actually thought about it. Finally, the boy looked up at him.

“I don’t really know,” he finally admitted. 

“When was the last time they contacted you?” Bruce asked. 

“A few days ago. Mom texted to see if I’d gotten into any more trouble with Headmaster Hammer. He’s trying to contact them too.”

“What does the Headmaster want to talk to them about?” Bruce asked. Tim shrugged. “Tim?”

“Behavioral issues,” Tim mumbled, clearly embarrassed. 

“What kind of behavioral issues?” Bruce inquired. Issues at school had always been a warning sign for issues with Robin. This was usually when the boys started questions orders. 

“My grades,” he said. “I don’t always do my homework. Or go to class.”

“Why not?” Bruce asked. 

“It’s boring,” Tim replied. “I know all that stuff.”

Bruce thought about that. Dick had tolerated school, for the most part, getting good grades, and impressing the teachers. He mostly liked it because he liked his friends. That boy could make friends anywhere and with anyone. Jason, on the other hand, had been denied school for so long that when Bruce had finally enrolled him and the teachers had gotten him caught up, he had loved it. He had been the kind of kid who pretended he wasn’t sick just so he could put his butt in the desk. Jason had hated missing school. 

Tim, apparently, was a different kind of student. 

“If you know it then you should be getting perfect grades,” Bruce told him, not entirely sympathetic. “You can’t pick and choose what you learn or what you decide is important.”

“Why not?” Tim asked. 

“Because that’s not how life works, Tim,” Bruce replied. “You’ll have to do a lot of boring things in life; you’ll have to sit and listen to people tell you what you already know. I do it every day at work. Yesterday, one of my VPs tried to explain to me how police investigations work. He was mostly wrong but I sat there and listened.”

“Why?” Tim asked, crinkling his nose.

“Because it’s better for them to think they taught me something than for me to resist. It makes the cover story a lot easier.”

Tim clearly thought about that. 

“So, if I let Mrs. Yates teach me about the science I already know, she’ll stop telling the Headmaster I’m a brat?” he finally asked. 

Bruce didn’t think a teacher should be calling a student names, especially where they could hear, but he could circle back to that at the next alumni dinner with Headmaster Hammer.

“I imagine she would,” Bruce said instead. 

“Oh,” was Tim’s only reply but he looked as if a light bulb had gone off in his head. 

“I want you to start working for me at Wayne Enterprises,” Bruce said suddenly and Tim’s head snapped up in surprise. “As an intern.”

“Doing what?” Tim asked.

“Working special projects,” Bruce replied. Tim’s eyes got a gleam to them as if he was imagining all of the cool things he’d be seeing while working on special projects with Bruce Wayne himself. Bruce didn’t tell him that he would be doing paperwork and filing. He wanted to see if the boy would pay attention to the boring task or if he would rebel just as he’d done at school. It would be a good test for Tim’s patience and self-control. 

“Cool!” the boy exclaimed. 

“And I want you to pack a bag,” Bruce continued. Tim had stayed the night in the Manor before when training had gone late and Alfred had insisted the boy stay lest he fall in a hole trying to walk through the dark back home. “You’re to start staying with me while you’re parents are out of town. You’re to the point where you need to be around the cave more. You’ll start picking up things faster just by being there.”

Tim’s smile was bright and Bruce would think his subtle maneuvering had been successful for years. When Tim was nineteen and acting as his second in command at Wayne Enterprises he would admit to Bruce that he’d seen straight through him. The boy had known all along what the man had been doing. 

“You’ve never been able to keep a secret from me,” Tim said, his smile just as bright as Bruce had remembered that day he’d told Tim to stop lying to him about his parents. 

“I wish I could say the same about you,” Bruce said, eyeing his son across the boy’s desk. Tim smirked, pleased with himself. 

“Are you telling me there’s a mystery the greatest detective in the world hasn’t solved?” Tim teased. 

“Don’t tell Clark,” Bruce said. “I’ll never hear the end of it.”

Tim just laughed.


End file.
